Blizzard: “What, you guys don’t have phones?”
Apple: “You’re holding your phone wrong.”
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Fair. I honestly wasn’t expecting anyone to be on board. I just wanted to know what people thought about it. I agree that its a very circumstantial idea and that it wouldn’t suit everyone because there’s hardly anyone in the situation to find it useful.
I also agree that Blizzard would probably take years to do this and their resources are limited already.
I’m glad people actually replied. I had fun with it. I’m done replying though. I have nothing else to see here. Back to replying to the wretched whiners about this game.
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start a discussion on that forum…lul
I can see why you are going here. But it is technically impossible for a device like the ipad pro to replace your laptop.
First of all, it runs ARM cpu. While they are great, power efficient cpus, they lack the raw power and headroom of proper x86 laptop cpus. The device doesn’t even have a proper GPU.
Secondly, the device has no cooling capacity. Proper cooling is a must for gaming anything above candy crush. Otherwise you will get thrutling performance. This already happens on stress tests on ipad pros.
Third, the ipad pro replaces your laptop only if what you ever do is document editing and Internet browsing. You need a proper OS for more complex situations.
Last, take a look at the surface pro line: the i7 SKU is capable of running hots in hd resolution. But that is a tablet-laptop hybrid done right. Even so, gaming on it is far fetched.
So, ipad pro replacing laptops isn’t going to happen. Just as laptops replacing pcs. A laptop can do much more than document editing and web browsing.
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It is? I have a rather old laptop that struggles with HotS and I considered replacing it with a surface.
Do you have first hand experience?
Yes. But i wouldn’t recommend gaming on it. Unless you can find an additional way of cooling it.
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i want or be clear, I think having HotS developed for the iPad Pro would be dumb. Just, it has the performance to do so.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13661/the-2018-apple-ipad-pro-11-inch-review/4
Have you taken a look at the performance per clock of Apple’s custom CPU cores?
They’re generally considered ahead of, or at minimum equal to Intel’s.
Other ARM vendors, yeah, they are slower. But Apple has just as much, if not more, power than Intel. And I know this game is playable at 2-2.5Ghz on the CPU side. So that is taken care of!
Again, you’re utterly clueless. Graphically, the graphics core in the IPad Pro 11” 2018, is stronger than the MX150, which is suitable for playing HotS.
It can dissipate the 5-8W of heat that would be generated passively.
Uh. Yeah, except you’re GPU bound… and the iPad Pro blows the i7 away in terms of GPU power.
The i7 has about 300-400 GFLOPs of FP32 peak performance. The iPad Pro has ~650-700 GFLOPS peak FP32, and can run FP16, up to about 1300-1400 GLFOPs.
Completely agree based on the current stats of things. Although it looks like Apple is starting to get at least somewhat serious at it, given iPad OS is now it’s own thing. In a few years might be good enough to let iPad’s replace laptops.
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Hots is CPU bound, not gpu bound. This is why you can play potato gpu on this game. The problem with the ipad gpu is its feature set.
As for the CPU, x86 is much more IPC efficient than ARM, regardless of variety. You will never match i5 level of performance on the same generation with ARM. Sure, apple may beat the low power intel socs, but not the core i series. But this is because intel abandoned low power socs.
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No. You’re ignoring facts here.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12694/assessing-cavium-thunderx2-arm-server-reality/7
And Apple’s CPU is faster per clock than ThunderX2.
When you’re using an iGPU, with 300-400 GFLOPS, you’re probably GPU bound.
I’m GPU bound at 1440p with an i5-6600k (stock) and RX 580.
No, Apple beats those also. Of at minimum ties them.
With ice lake, Intel probably pulled ahead in performance per clock/IPC.
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You are comparing apples to oranges, literally. And nowhere in that article does it say that Intel loses against ARM. Lol. In fact, arm can only keep up cause it has 32 cores as opposed to 20, and only in multithread scenarios.
You are gpu bound cause you play at 1440p on a gpu designed for 1080. Try running this game on a gpu designed for 1440p, and you will be cpu bound.
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While relative IPC tends to drop as clocks increase (very slightly) ThunderX2 at 2.5Ghz was in the ~50-60% of the performance in a single thread at 65% of the clockspeed.
Or about, 80-95% of the IPC.
Or, talking directly about the Apple A12:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13392/the-iphone-xs-xs-max-review-unveiling-the-silicon-secrets/4
I mean, i’m happy With my 144hz frame limited performance.
Typically in 120-144Hz
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That’s Apple against other ARM CPUs. It is widely accepted that Apple can outrun most ARM CPUs of its generation. Doesn’t mean it can do the same with x86 CPUs.
Anyway, a more nuanced approach to things can be found here:
https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/279988-apples-ipad-pro-a12x-nearly-matches-top-end-x86-cpus-in-geekbench
Apple is far, far from matching intel in any real world applications.
Even if they don’t match it, you don’t think Apple’s CPU’s could run HotS?
Honest question.
No, I do not believe so. This game is very CPU intensive and benefits from high single core performance. The ipad will overheat and not perform properly after a while, due to lack of active cooling.
That’s one of Apple’s biggest issues. Overheating. You pay an arm and a leg for a device and it overheats. So stupid.
I guess the only way to know for sure is to test it 
In the case of the ipad, you cannot really do anything since it is fanless. In the case of its macbook pro line, yeah, they sort of messed up: intel added 2 extra cores while keeping the same thermals per core, but apple didn’t update the cooling system.
As a side note, a lot of laptop manufacturers are struggling to cool the latest gen Intel CPUs. I guess the problem will be fixed when intel finally moves to a 10nm process.
They could add watercooling no? I guess that’s too much to ask from Apple.
Yes, using SPEC CPU2006.
Which is a benchmark for servers and high performance cores, which they got running on phones.
Yes, it kind of does.
CPUspec from Intel’s latest microarchitecture (their latest mass produced), last generation Xeon, running at 3.8Ghz versus latest Apple core (Vortex) at 2.5Ghz.
sources:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13661/the-2018-apple-ipad-pro-11-inch-review/4
https://www.anandtech.com/show/14694/amd-rome-epyc-2nd-gen/9
400.perlbench: 46.4 versus 45.38
401.bzip2: 27 versus 28.54
403.gcc: 31 versus 44.56
439.mcf 40.6 versus 49.92
445.gobmk 27.7 versus 38.54
456.hmmer 35.6 versus 44.04
458.sjeng 32.8 versus 36.60
462.libquantum 86.4 versus 113.40 discount this.
464.h264ref 64.7 versus 66,59
471.omnetpp 37.9 versus 35.73
473.astar 24.7 versus 27.25
483.xalancbmk 63.7 versus 57.03
at 65% of the clockspeed, in a single threaded application, in a TPD limited device, with far less bandwidth, Apple is blowing Intel out of the water.
Specint has it’s problems, but the idea that it’s overestimating Apple’s performance by 50%+ is hilariously off base.
I’ve been talking about a single theaded application which is meant for servers, not these general purpose things.
I do think that the Specint results overestate Apple’s performance per clock/IPC. As I don’t think it is 30-40% over Intel’s.
But the idea that Apple’s CPUs are to weak to run HotS is hilarious.
I was able to get to ~20-25fps on an ancient Llano (K10.5) CPU at 1.4Ghz. Apple could easily hold a locked 30fps. Probably at only 1-2W on the CPU, leaving 4-5W for the GPU, which would be plenty to run fine while passively cooled.
Because even if Apple was behind Intel by 20-30% IPC, they could maintain 30fps easily, on the CPU side.
lock the FPS to 30 and you’ll keep the CPU power draw on the single core it has loaded at <2W.
You should be able to dissipate ~7-8W of heat total passively.
Leaving ~5W for the GPU.
on their terribly “make it thinnar!!!” notebooks, 100%. (Same goes for their iMac units).
If you truly pound the Ipads to their limit, i’m sure also.
But you don’t need anywhere near peak performance to run HotS at native resolution at 30fps. 4-5W, which is easy to passively dissiptae pretty much forever if you’re in a reasonable temperature.
About 7-8W is the limit for passive cooling on tablets.
That’s what I thought. They can run battle royale games just fine but I guess the question is which game needs more processing power, battle royale games or MOBA’s? If MOBA’s need more power then the fact they can run battle royale games is useless.
depends how you push the graphics/how graphically demanding the game is. At low settings, 30fps, HotS shouldn’t be that demanding. You would only need about a quarter to a third of the GPU grunt, and only one thread on the CPU, probably not at full throttle.
in general, the power demand will depend on how graphically hard the developers pushed.
HotS and what it was born from, Starcraft 2, are meant to be able to run on very weak machines in their lowest settings. So very little power would be needed/
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